MAGA v MAGA: Georgia election exposes divisions in Trump’s base

DALTON, Georgia – President Donald Trump may have expected his endorsement of a local prosecutor in the race to replace US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to clear the Republican field.

Instead, more than a dozen Republicans are still competing, turning this deeply conservative corner of Georgia into an election-year test of Mr Trump’s hold on his Make America Great Again movement.

Mr Clay Fuller, the former district attorney for four counties in north-west Georgia, became the presumptive front runner after Mr Trump threw his support behind him on Feb 4, describing him as a torchbearer of MAGA.

Mr Trump’s endorsement, however, has not deterred 14 other Republican candidates from pressing ahead in the March 10 special election, with early voting to start on Feb 16. Three Democratic candidates and one independent are also competing.

Several of the Republican candidates are casting themselves as the true champions of Mr Trump’s right-wing populism, vying to fill the vacuum left by Ms Greene, who

resigned her congressional seat in January

after a bitter split with the president.

Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, a mostly blue-collar corridor from Atlanta’s exurbs up to the Tennessee border, has established itself as a MAGA stronghold since Ms Greene swept to victory in 2020 and quickly became one of the movement’s most outspoken national figures.

Now, with Ms Greene stepping aside, the district’s voters are grappling with what comes next for the party and who should lead it.

Interviews with 22 voters suggest the race remains fluid. Most Republicans said they had not settled on a candidate and that Mr Trump’s endorsement alone will not decide their vote.

“I’m a Trump supporter, and I respect his opinion, but he doesn’t live in this district,” said Mr John Burdette, a voter who attended a candidate forum this week in the city of Kennesaw. “I think we have a better perspective on who is best to represent us.”

The fight to claim the mantle of MAGA standard-bearer in Ms Greene’s district highlights how the movement nationally is evolving. While fealty to Mr Trump is still the distinct denominator, there is increasingly less agreement on what it means to be “MAGA”, a label that now covers a far more diverse coalition.

These emerging divisions pose a risk for Republicans’ control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, creating potential openings for Democrats to take advantage of any infighting in competitive districts.

With Republicans splitting votes, political observers say the leading Democratic candidate, Mr Shawn Harris, could gain enough support to make a run-off, set for April 7 if no candidate secures a majority.

After losing to Ms Greene by 64.4 per cent to 35.6 per cent in 2024, his performance will be watched to see if Democrats can sustain their recent streak of outperforming in special elections, though outright victory is seen as highly unlikely.

A US Air Force veteran, Mr Fuller said he aims to focus on bringing economic development to the district’s poorer rural communities stretching across the foothills of Appalachia. He also vowed to move past Ms Greene’s combative style, marked by conspiracy-mongering and online attacks on Mr Trump’s perceived enemies that drew scrutiny to the district.

“I’ve got the gear for fire and brimstone when the situation calls for it,” he told Reuters after a campaign event. “But I’m my own man. I don’t think the voters want that style again.”

‘God, guns, Trump’

Still, Mr Fuller does sometimes use inflammatory rhetoric in support of Mr Trump’s agenda.

On Jan 24 – the same day federal immigration officers shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis – he pledged in a post on X that, if elected, he would nominate all Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for the Presidential Medal of Freedom and push to triple the agency’s budget.

But no candidate in the race has been as fiery or aggressive in backing the president over the years as Mr Colton Moore, a hard-right former state senator who calls himself “Trump’s #1 Defender” and is running under the slogan “GOD. GUNS. TRUMP.”

A longtime champion of Mr Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Mr Moore has repeatedly clashed with Georgia’s Republican leadership.

To Mr Charles Stoker, an 81-year-old Republican voter, that confrontational approach is precisely what resonates with grassroots conservatives eager to challenge the establishment. He noted that a string of Georgia Republicans lost their races in the 2022 midterms despite being endorsed by Mr Trump.

“President Trump has been getting bad advice,” he said, voicing disappointment with the Fuller endorsement. “Directions need to come from the people upward.”

Though he missed out on Mr Trump’s endorsement, Mr Moore has secured backing from former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and the Georgia Republican Assembly (GRA), a group that represents the party’s far-right wing.

“President Trump’s going to be gone in a few years,” GRA President Nathaniel Darnell told Reuters, arguing that Mr Moore, not Mr Fuller, could be trusted to work in the district’s best interests.

The main differences between candidates are on style rather than substance. Some candidates have embraced the combative approach that defines Trumpism, while some have called for more civility and consensus-building in politics.

Ms Meg Strickland, who voted for Mr Trump, is one of the few self-described moderates in the race. She says the party should chart a new course that would see it return to its small-government roots and move away from caustic, personality-driven politics.

“I don’t think that Trump is a true conservative and I hope that we can get back there,” said the 39-year-old travel consultant and mother of three.

Long odds for Harris, but could send Republicans a message

Ms Strickland, running on a “return to normal” message, acknowledges the steep odds she faces in a district Mr Trump carried with 68 per cent of the vote in 2024.

But she believes Republicans are misreading the moment, pointing to the voter backlash to aggressive tactics by federal immigration agents and the cost-of-living squeeze she says dominates her campaign stops.

Mr Harris, a 59-year-old cattle farmer and retired brigadier general, has made courting disaffected Republican voters a central focus of his Democratic candidacy, aiming to win them over with a message centered on lowering costs for everyday workers and expanding access to affordable healthcare.

Mr Harris, who has US$1.2 million (S$1.52 million) on hand to campaign, said he sees overlap between his positions and Ms Greene’s

since her break with Mr Trump

and shift in focus to helping working Americans, curbing toxic politics and tackling the national debt.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Republican that has moved back into what the old Republicans were,” Mr Harris said. “Her talking points are the same talking points that I had when I ran against her the last time.”

A Quantus Insights poll of 729 registered Republicans conducted in the last week of January, before Mr Trump’s endorsement, pointed to a wide-open race, with Mr Moore and Mr Fuller at the top with 13.4 per cent and 12.6 per cent support, and more than a third of respondents undecided.

Professor Nathan Price, a political science professor at the University of North Georgia, said the race’s fluidity reflects a Republican Party and a MAGA movement in transition.

“I think you’re starting to see perhaps the party looking beyond him a little bit as he gets into the sixth year and maybe starting to think about the future of the party,” he said. REUTERS